


No Man's Destiny

by HealthKitt



Category: Destiny (Video Games), No Man's Sky (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, My First Fanfic, Slow burn i guess?, and existentialism warning i guess?, but i haven't decided how much they'll be in moving forward, but they come back to life, cayde and sundance are in chapter 2, death warning kind of because that happens in nms, did you know that 'yes' in rot 16 is 'oui', spoilers for no man's sky, the traveller also frequently mentions getting eaten by things, they've been through some stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-01-24 08:03:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21334927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HealthKitt/pseuds/HealthKitt
Summary: Spoilers for the ending of No Man’s Sky,(but also canon has been thrown out the window.)A Traveller finds out what exists beyond Atlas, and a Ghost finds their Guardian in a very unique way in a very unfortunate place.Should make as much sense to non-No Man's Sky players as it does to the characters, I think.
Relationships: Ghost/Guardian (Destiny)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 30





	1. New Horizons

**Author's Note:**

> \- The first half of the chapter is written from the Traveller’s perspective, and the second half covers the same events through the eye(?) of the Ghost.  
\- Traveller refers to the No Man's Sky protagonist, whereas Traveler refers to the big ol' orb from Destiny.  
\- The language that the POV character doesn't know (Traveller and whatever Ghosts speak) is written in a caesar cipher, but don't worry! You can read what they were trying to say in their half of the chapter!

Part 1: The Traveller's Perspective

I see the worlds I visit through a helmet. It's the logical choice; these worlds were dangerous even before they began falling apart. It isn't due to any kind of inherent maliciousness, only that they weren't tailor-made for an entity like me. 

But it still gets to me, sometimes. I can't taste the sea on the wind of the ocean planets, nor smell the flowers in the deserts that have them. The tinting of my visor, too, makes everything just a little bit more teal than I know they really are. Even touch is a sensation dulled by the thick gauntlets made to protect me from burning stone and poisonous plants. The sound, at least, is mostly the same, but hearing that a very large animal is behind you doesn't have quite the same impact as feeling the heat from its breath as it opens its maw wide to try to take a bite out of you. And knowing it's all going to end soon, that reality itself is falling apart, it gives me a strange sort of grief - like I missed my chance to find somewhere I belong.

So, sometimes, I do something a little....Less logical.

I take my helmet off. Never the gloves, and it's just to feel the planet before I leave. Some planets, anyway; I know better than to try it on the ones without an atmosphere. Besides, I always have to leave. After robbing me of my memories of my home, and of my purpose, Atlas owes me this one thing. 

It's never what I want it to be.

I can feel the suns warm my skin and see the world without the overlay of a HUD feeding me information and highlighting every rock and tree I focus on. I can breathe the world in and almost pretend that I could choose to stay, that the world might want me to. Then I start to get a feeling like something isn't quite right, as if I remember it feeling differently than before.

And then every world I visit, without failure, reminds me that I do not belong there. 

Without my helmet, the suns of the desert planets dig into my skin, burning me to the core and branding my DNA with a warning to stay away.

Without my helmet, it takes only a single misstep for the tides of an ocean planet to pull me in, to fill my nose and my lungs and burn me from the inside out. The radioactive seas, especially, leave a twisting taste in my mouth that makes my head hurt and my stomach churn.

Without my helmet, the ice planets bite deep and whisper to my bones, making them shiver and quake within my body uncontrollably. 

Without my helmet, even the more peaceful planets of soft grass and gentle hills ward me off in time, with rain so hot it leaves welts on my skin or living, moving plants that lash out into my flesh to feed themselves.

Essentially, everything is either so apathetic towards me that my death is an inevitability, or they just really, really want to eat me.

Though Atlas is dying, that death is slow and it still has the power to bring me back and let me try again. 

So I land on a planet, gather what I need to extend my journey, and then I give the planet a chance to ask me to stay. 

It feels a lot like loneliness.

I met others on my travels, of course, but they rarely sought to make meaningful conversation. 

The Korvax wanted to study me, to learn and utilize the knowledge of Atlas to become like it. Knowing what I do now, that it's nothing more than a failing simulation, maybe they were closer than they thought. I perhaps spent more time with them than any of the others, and I'd like to think that helped me think more like a computer...But maybe not like a massive inorganic hive mind of computers. Only time will tell.

The Vy'Keen wanted to serve or be served by me, for the glory of Atlas. From them, I would like to think that I learned my determination, albeit largely from the pirates who sought out my head for bounty.

The Gek...

I'm actually not sure what the Gek wanted in the end, after all the meddling by the Korvax. I'm not sure what I learned from them, either. 

Their conversations were distant, no matter how many or how few words I know of their languages. They knew I am not of them. I'm a Traveller, an Entity of Atlas, and so all interest was directed through rather than at me; they wanted the attention of Atlas, to impress or use or become it. 

They all called me 'Traveller', the will of Atlas.

It didn't do them any good; when sixteen minutes passed and reality began to finally, really fail, the space stations were the first to go and with them, all the people aboard. Interactions with other entities became even more rare. As distant as our talks were, I miss them anyway.

There were other Travellers, too, but no one else ever seemed to be able to see them, and the way they spoke was more alien to me than any of the other species I meet. Even amongst them, even before the end, I felt a gulf of distance from any of them.

Even Atlas calls me 'Anomaly', and so I get the sense that Atlas itself doesn't think I belong to this universe. 

But maybe that's the point.

Interacting with Atlas is...Different, but I don't know that I'd say it's better beyond the fact that Atlas, fragmented though it is, is still here. When I come across one of the old monoliths and reach out into it with my soul, it reaches back and presses a weight into my brain. Atlas tests me, probes me for answers and opinions, not to know the depths of my soul but to judge me and the place I take in the End. It doesn't know what to make of me.

It isn't all bad, though. Even when the worlds feel so far away, I like to see them. I like to learn. Atlas teaches me new words, words once used by the Korvax and Gek and Vy'Keen. The monoliths let me see histories that I'm not sure ever really existed, but they make for nice stories. Even the abandoned bases, overgrown with infestations and biological horrors, tell stories of the people who once lived there and the lives they might have once led. 

Every scan, every study fills my databases with more news, more knowledge, more things to busy myself with and figure out even if the only entity to access them now is Atlas itself. Maybe that's why I ended up a Traveller; not because Atlas made me, but because I so badly need to find something that isn't here, and that pushes me forward.

With all that scanning, it was kind of inevitable that I'd find another anomaly. Unfortunately, I wasn't alive to meet it. 

I got hit in the face with a very little ship, I think. 

It wouldn't have been so strange, were I actually in space at the time, but I wasn't. I had my feet on the ground on an anomalous planet, putting my scanner to work trying to find out what was on the other side of the failing boundary of reality. The simulation was ending, I knew; all the space stations and the life on them were already gone. I don't know why I didn't go, too, but I had to use this time. I had to find out what was outside and if I could get there. The answer to the first part of that was, apparently, death. 

And then I came back to life like I always did, but this time something was wrong. I couldn't feel the red eye of Atlas within me, peering out of my helmet at the world around me, nor could I feel the sense of bearing that anchored me to its worlds. There was something else there instead, something small and bright. 

I didn't resurrect next to my ship, either, but next to the one that killed me. That seemed strangely insulting, I thought as my feet hit the ground. I put my hand to my torso, tried to check my systems for the source of the light, but I couldn't see it. It felt like it was deep inside. Had something on this anomaly infected me? And the ship-

Ah! The ship!

I turned to check for a pilot and instead found a small, spikey orb in my face, shining a bright light over me. It scanned like a sentinel, but it was a little smaller and its light was bright blue. I haven't had a great history with the Sentinels, but it was too late to escape the scan. I held my breath as I waited to see if Atlas would punish me for setting foot on this world.

_"Lun, cqoru?"_ It spoke.

Sentinels definitely don't speak, and the language wasn't one I'd ever heard before. 

It kept talking. _"Iehho qrekj jxu bqdtydw. Y mqid'j jhoydw je...Mubb, buj'i zkij iqo jxu whqlyjo xuhu yid'j mxqj y mqi unfusjydw. Yj'i fherqrbo jxu vyhij jycu q wxeij xqi uluh aybbut jxuyh wkqhtyqd, xkx? Xqxq....Xq....Y cuqd, Y xefu ie."_

It said  _ so _ many words, and I didn't understand even one of them. I stared back at the little light, then glanced around for any kind of context. None. In fact, the whole world we were on had changed to something like a lush but toxic planet with very abrupt, technological shapes jutting from its surface amongst the gases creeping from its surface. It wasn't the first time this had happened to me, though; even before I knew Atlas was deteriorating, the worlds had sometimes shifted into something new around me. That didn't give me any answers about the entity trying to communicate with me, though.

So I did the next thing I could think to do, which was scan it back. 

The little blue light in the center of it grew smaller for a moment, as though with alarm or surprise, but it did not flee.

I felt the data enter my systems, but it did not leave them. Atlas couldn't see this. But why?

The information I got back wasn't very helpful; the primary components weren't any materials I recognized, and so many of the informational fields just said 'Light', which seemed excessively obvious. 

I closed the data to stare at the new entity again. It had stopped talking, but it seemed almost....Uncomfortable? Maybe it was waiting to see what my judgment of the data was. 

Maybe the language it was speaking wasn't the only one it knew. I tried the others that I knew. 

First, the language of the Traveller - I think. The language I was born speaking. "Who are you?" 

But the light looked to me with two shutters closed slightly over the orb in the center, as though it was squinting at me with confusion.

Gek. "Furfi ket kuje, ushisti?" What are you, friend?

The little eye grew small this time, for a moment. The entity made a strange sound, but it wasn't one that I could work out, either. 

"Odinov." I pointed to myself, but the Korvax introduction of myself didn't work, either. The light flickered, like it was blinking. It started to scan me again. 

I sighed to myself and tried to forge on.

"Sic...woome gequa... " My Vy'Keen isn't very good, but it didn't seem like that was doing any good anyway. I'm not even sure those words made sense, but I think I might have been about to confront it for killing me. The Vy'Keen certainly would.

Atlas was the only language left, though I wasn't sure if I wanted this entity to know it. If it did, didn't that mean it was another piece of the simulation, like everything else I'd ever seen, and that it, too, would die with this universe?

I didn't get the chance to ask. 

"Odin...ov?" The entity attempted, but its tone told me it was trying to parrot me, not speaking to me. It reverted to its own language. _"Yi jxqj oekh dqcu?"_

Maybe it wanted to learn Korvax. Okay, that made sense; it looked like some of the other robots I've met. Maybe not the Korvax, since they had legs and arms and stuff and this definitely did not, but this was....Fine. I could work with this. 

I put my hand to my core again and said it more firmly. "Odinov."

Anomaly. The word the Korvax used for planets like this and the word used for me, for a Traveller that lived inside the simulation but never seemed to belong to it. A reminder that I was not a part of this existence but that I would have to watch it die nonetheless. 

I sucked in a deep breath, then gently turned my hand towards the other entity to give it the opportunity to introduce itself, as well. 

My translator kicked in, thank Atlas, but its response made me wonder if my translator wasn't broken along with the rest of reality. 

"**Ghost.**" 

Ghost? Was it dead, or just emulating the dead? Or was this a new product of the collapse of Atlas? Maybe something was being made to fill in the gaps where Atlas had once been. Maybe Atlas was the one to ask for help with this. I triggered my scanner, sending a wave of lines out in every direction as I sought out anything that could help...But no data came back. Was this, too, a product of the simulation breaking down? Did Atlas have no oversight here? 

We were standing beside what looked like a portal, but with no glyphs carved it. It was copper-colored, too, and had no stand with which to access it. Had we gone through it, or was this just where we ended up when the last solar system collapsed into the next?

The little light shifted abruptly, as though startled by my scanner, but my focus was on this world. 

And then I realized that I wasn't a part of Atlas anymore. 

My database wasn't networking with the others because there weren't any others to contact anymore. I couldn't find any data about my surroundings because I was asking a simulation that didn't exist for a place it wasn't a part of. This entity didn't know my languages because they didn't belong to this reality. 

I was in another reality.

I wish I could say I handled that realization with some dignity but, no, I just dropped into the fetal position with my arms over my head and freaked out while the little light flittered around me, trying to speak to me still. 

When it realized its words really did have no impact on me, it vanished. 

I felt like I had stayed there for ages and yet I didn't get up to move until I heard sounds far away, like little explosions or...Like a boltcaster, maybe. Another entity? I pushed myself to my feet and began to head that way.

Then the little light's voice was suddenly loud and in my ears, like it was inside my helmet - or inside my head. _"Yj iekdti byau jxuhu'i vywxjydw qxuqt. Mu ixekbt-"_

Startled, I did the totally reasonable thing and immediately yanked my helmet off and threw it. 

As wither every other one, the world tried to shoo me away. My eyes burned with the gases of this planet, then my lungs did as well. And yet...There was that little light where Atlas had once been, ushering away the pain. How could a planet like this feel so welcoming, like it knew me?

There was silence for a moment, then the little light appeared in front of me, light turned to watch my helmet sail away. _"Weet qhc."_

It was silent for a long moment, then turned back to me with shutters squinted again in what I was starting to guess was concern and confusion. It stayed for that for a long time, its eyelight studying me. Was that what it was doing, like the Korvax? Just waiting to see what I did? It talked even more. _"Xkx. Ie oek qhu xkcqd...Rkj qhu oek eaqo...?" _

"I don't  _ understand _ you!" I snapped at it, frustrated that it would keep using its language when it so clearly didn't help. And why had it been in my head?! And how? There shouldn't be room in my head for a robot!

The light shrank back, just a little, as though my tone frightened it. Something wrenched in my chest; I'd finally met another entity, and one of the first things I did was try to hurt it, even emotionally? That's not who I am. That's not who I want to be.

"I'm...Sorry." I said, trying to soften my tones as I sidled back over to my helmet. "I didn't mean to yell. It's just-reality just ended, you know, and then there's a whole other one I have to figure out, and it's a little stressful." 

Even though we'd well established that it wouldn't understand me, either, the little light seemed to relax as I spoke. It was strange, though; my focus was on putting my helmet back on, so I didn't get that impression through any kind of observation. I just kind of felt it, the way that I felt hunger or exhaustion or happiness. 

I looked back to it, gaze searching the little blue lights in the center of the core. There was something here, for sure - was this what I was looking for? Of all the worlds that I've seen and all the people that I've met, it kind of figures that even when I finally meet someone that I think might want me to stay with them, I can't understand a word they say. 

The little light turned its gaze - maybe the orb is an eye? - towards the horizon as more shots rang out. Whatever was going on out there, it was undoubtedly a fight. 

It spoke again. This time, its tone was softer, too, matching mine. _"Y'c weydw je we rqsa yd oekh fqsa, dem. Oek'bb xuqh cu jxhekwx oekh secci. Yj'i eaqo."_

I didn't understand that, either, but I steeled myself and tapped my helmet again to try to tell the little light to get back in my head. There was a fight nearby, obviously, and this robot was so small and it hadn't even shot at me yet. At least inside my head, it wouldn't get shot. 

Maybe it was all the time that I'd spent traveling alone getting to me, but it never occurred to me that I might try to go separate ways from this little light. Sure, it had killed me, I think, but what hasn't? Tons of sentinels have shot me on sight. We could work on it. 

It vanished again, presumably back into my head. I held my breath, waiting to see if I'd hear it from inside again.

I did, but it seemed more tentative, as though it was actively trying not to startle me this time. _"Xuo...Y'c xuhu. Y'c myjx oek, _Odinov_."_

I didn't even take off my helmet and throw it this time, because I am a Traveller and we are supposed to be adaptable, damn it. 

This was just a new kind of world to explore, and one I wouldn't have to explore alone. All of reality as I knew it might have ended, but I have new horizons. Even if Atlas was gone, it would always live on in the scans in my database and in my memories. I started to head towards the gunfire - the memory of the Vy'Keen pushed me to be a warrior, to learn where the conflict was and how to end it - but then there was a sound. 

Atlas. 

I turned back towards the portal from whence I had come, and watched it crumble in on itself. A cubed core sat amongst the rubble, firing off a weak red line as it tried to scan its surroundings. There was something left of Atlas in there. I knelt down, carefully scooped it up in my hands, then lightly pressed my helmet to it before placing it in my storage. I couldn't stay with it, but I could take it with me. It wouldn't have to be alone, either. 

The entity that called itself 'Ghost' chittered inside my head again. _"Ex. Ie...Te oek kikqbbo fysa kf _**Vex**_ fqhji, eh...Oek adem mxqj, duluhcydt. Buj'i zkij we."_ This didn't make any more sense than any of the rest of it had, but-

Wait. Yes it did. One of the words had been translated - and it was one it had used before. 

"Vex?" I repeated, tone hopeful. I didn't know what it meant, but I knew that this word would sound the same to me as it did to it instead of like the garbled, broken sounds my ears were feeding me. 

"_Oui!_ Vex!" The Ghost sounded delighted, but then its tone shifted to caution. _"Byau jxeiu. Mxysx cywxj ixeej ki." _

Well, that didn't mean anything to me, but this was a step forward. We could do this. 

I turned back towards the gunfire and found tall, brassy creatures looking back at me, each with a bright red eye like Atlas...Or like a Sentinel about to shoot me. 

"Vex." The Ghost repeated. 

**Part 2: The Ghost's Perspective**

The Traveler created every Ghost with one purpose driving them. From the moment we awaken, we know that we have to find our Guardian. Our Guardian is our partner, through which we can help all of humanity and protect its worlds.

Some Ghosts choose their Guardians because they sense something in them: potential. That with the Light they can be granted, they can make a difference. Others choose their Guardians because they feel in them a deep connection from the moment that they scan them, something stirring within them that we can't really explain.

Typically, their Guardians may have been dead for years, even centuries. With the power of the Light, we can bring them back to life. The Guardian usually has little memories of their previous life (at first, anyway), but we can help them adjust to their new lives. 

Except, typically, you aren't also the thing that killed your Guardian before you even met them. 

So, yeah. That one's on me.

It wasn't like I did it on purpose; I didn't even know they were there. Ghosts have to look in all kinds of places to find their Guardian, and I've been looking for a few centuries already. My options have been dwindling. 

I went searching on Venus...And...Directly into Vex territory. 

I've looked into what the Vex have made in the past enough to know that it can set my shell spinning. They terraform planets, run massive simulations and make gates between worlds. And apparently those Gates can sometimes set off a massive, confusing energy spike and explode for no reason whatsoever. So it's not like I really meant to launch through the air and directly into their face, but that's what happened. 

I wasn't even sure that was what had happened, at first; with the way that they looked, I wasn't sure what they were. Their armor glinted in a shade I don't think I've ever seen except, maybe, in the dreams that I saw during the Red War, when I couldn't reach my Light. Their helmet, too, seemed to shift and change any time I really focused on it. 

I scanned them, and then I felt it. 

That sense of belonging that I'd only heard other ghosts speak of, that knowledge that this, right here, was right. This was where I was supposed to be. 

But it kind of worked out, right? I found my Guardian, and that means that I can resurrect them. It's...Not how I would have wanted to do things, but I can work with this. I finally found them.

I let the Light course through me and into my Guardian, pulling their body together and trying to repair their helm where I'd damaged it. Venus isn't a paradise anymore, and even if it was...Well, the Guardians have as many enemies as they do friends...Which was why we'd need to work quickly to find them a gun and a ship to fly them to the Last City. Just because I can resurrect them doesn't mean that I want them to have to go through that...

And if any of those enemies get me, too, well, it's all been for nothing. Centuries of searching just to get us both killed.

Their feet hit the ground and they immediately clutched their hand forward with a strange sort of gun within it. I hadn't seen it strapped to them; it looked a bit like they'd pulled it out of the air. I tried to scan it, too, alongside my Guardian. What kind of equipment was this, anyway?

"Vex, maybe?" I mused aloud as my Guardian whipped around to face me. 

A little confusion is normal for a Guardian's first moments, but I've practiced this explanation over and over again in my head...

And none of that practice included hitting my Guardian in the face when we met.

Right.

My Guardian didn't respond, but that's fine; some people just don't talk a lot. I mean, the big hero doesn't even talk much to their Ghost, I've heard...Or maybe they remembered what I'd done, and thought I was a threat.

"Sorry about the landing. I wasn't trying to...Well, let's just say the gravity here isn't what I was expecting." Vex gates were weird, but I could talk that out right now if they didn't know what a Vex was. They kept staring, so I tried to make a joke. "It's probably the first time a ghost has ever killed their guardian, huh? Haha...Ha...I mean, I hope so."

No, probably not. Some Guardians have gone bad before.

Very, very bad.

My Guardian stared back at me still, then tore their gaze away to look around. That was fair; a lot had probably changed since they died here. I waited until they looked back at me, and then...

And then I felt electricity shift through my servos, something from outside of me signaling data back to my Guardian as a network of red lines crossed me from the little orb strapped to its shoulder. It looked a little like me, I thought, and almost began to wonder if that meant the Traveler had - Wait.

Wait, my Guardian scanned me. 

I wasn't really sure what to do with that - I can't say it's rude since I did the same thing - so I just waited to see what they decided of me. Would they know, too, that we were soulmates? 

They spoke, but the words didn't match any of the human languages I know. 

_"Mxe qhu oek?"_ Their voice was wary but smooth. My Guardian sounds...Kind of cool, actually. Nice.

Except I don't know what they're saying. Not nice. I squinted at them as I tried to pore over the information I had. Was it a dialect I just didn't know? But the Light should have done that translating for me. 

They spoke again, and this time it was entirely different. _"Furfi ket kuje, ushisti?"_ Their voice was a little nasally, this time, and sounded like an entirely different person from the one that had said their last words. This, too, sounds like an entirely new language.

"Uh...." Oh no. Oh no, I broke my Guardian. I found my Guardian, and I hit them in the face, and then I messed up the resurrection. 

My Guardian let out a small, short breath of air - maybe a huff of impatience, then pressed their index finger to the center of their helmet. _"Odinov."_

I didn't understand that, either, and this voice sounded so much more like mine that I think I shut down for a moment. The voice was computerized, undoubtedly. Was my Guardian an EXO, maybe? But there had been so much blood...I scanned it again to check, but it moved its head again, as though growing frustrated.

_"Sic...woome gequa... "_ My Guardian's next words were more like growls, low and slow as though they needed a great deal of breath to say them. They trailed off, then stared at me. 

Right. So there's a language barrier, I thought. That's fine. I said that I could work with this, and I can. I just need to use all of these words and the context in which they were said to figure out literally any of them. 

Wait. They'd pointed at themselves for one of them. Maybe that had been a name. I replayed my internal file of the moment.

"Odin...ov?" I attempted. "Is that your name?" 

This could be a foothold. We could start here.

My Guardian's head tilted to the side for just a moment, then they placed their hand over their face and repeated, _"Odinov."_

So either that was their word for that body part, or they had a name. With nothing else to go on, I decided to bank on the name part and hope I wasn't just calling my Guardian 'face'. 

For just a second, my Guardian's shoulders sank and I sensed from them just a hint of a feeling. Over time, Ghost and Guardian form a neural link, but ours was too new to tell me anything beyond that whatever my Guardian was feeling, it wasn't something I could help with. 

They breathed in deep again, then extended their hand towards me. 

"Ghost," I said, slowly. Until our Guardian or someone else names us, that's all we call ourselves.

A red light flickered within my Guardian's helm, like the eye of a Vex staring back out at me. Maybe they really were Vex...Or the armor was, at least.

From my Guardian suddenly came a great pulse. There was a grid expanding from them in all directions that faded quickly but seemed to reach far. I've definitely seen the Vex do that before. But my Guardian couldn't be a Vex, right?

Well, either way, they're my Guardian. I took a moment to remind myself of that; even if they weren't what I was expecting, I knew they were my Guardian...And besides, they didn't ask for expectations to be placed upon them. They didn't even ask to be a Guardian. I needed to be patient, and supportive, and show them that we need them, that they can make a difference-

And then they were laying on the ground, holding their helmet and curled up into a ball. 

"Oh." Oh, no. "Hey...Hey, it's okay. I know, it's a lot." I tried to reassure them. "We can take this slowly. We'll figure this out. We haven't tried writing or sign language...Or maybe someone back at the Tower will know one of your languages."

Kind of silly, to talk to them to try to explain that I knew that I couldn't talk to them but thought it would be okay anyway. 

Whatever I did, it didn't seem to help. I disappeared into their pack to give them their time to adjust. All I could do was be there, I reasoned, until I learned how to help them best. 

We stayed there for only ten minutes, maybe, when shots rang out in the distance. Definitely Vex fighting something. "It sounds like there's fighting ahead," I spoke through my Guardian's comms. "We should-"

And then my Guardian just...Absolutely ripped their helmet off and chucked it away.

Okay. So maybe they were getting a little tired of me talking to them. Still, that seemed like a very dramatic reaction to it when they could have just turned the comms off. 

Even though I knew better, I'm not a big fan of silence. "Good arm." It was a pretty good throw, even if throwing your gear is, uh, a questionable decision.

I gave my Guardian a moment to calm down, then appeared before them again, this time a little further away than before, and focused on keeping their health topped off. That's another thing we Ghosts can do: we can heal our Guardians using the Light, given then time. This was also the first chance I had to see my Guardian's face, I realized.

Well, what face they have. Whatever I'd been expecting, this wasn't quite it; though there was a very human face in there, the base of their armor connected to their jaw, neck, and head with wires and nodes, like little suction cups attached to their face. What had the Vex been doing with them...?

The human parts, at least, I could make sense of. They were shorter than I had realized - the helmet must have added some height. Their dark, short hair was flattened to their head, presumably from quite a lot of time using that helmet. Their eyes, too, squinted somewhat at the change in pressure and brightness (or maybe from all the sulfur, since this is Venus). They then ducked their head, presumably to take a moment to adapt.

"Huh. So you are human..." I mused. Or were before the Vex got to them, maybe. "But are you okay...?" 

The response was loud and angry. _"Y ted'j kdtuhijqdt oek!"_ My Guardian leaned forward somewhat as their gaze burned into me, eyes dark and furious. 

I instinctively recoiled back, but then my Guardian's shoulders began to shake. I didn't need to neural connection to read those emotions. 

They were afraid and frustrated in a place they didn't recognize with a strange little floating robot speaking in a language they didn't understand. They couldn't feel the connection, I realized, and felt my shell slump with disappointment. It wouldn't be the first time a Guardian has refused the Light and their Ghost. I can't force it, no matter how long I've been looking for them.

My Guardian's eyes widened as they looked at me, then their brow furrowed. Regret, maybe. They started to raise a hand towards me, hesitated, then began to move for their helmet instead. 

They spoke again, this time for far many more words than they had before.

_"Y tytd'j cuqd je oubb. Yj'i zkij-huqbyjo zkij udtut, oek adem, qdt jxud jxuhu'i q mxebu ejxuh edu Y xqlu je vywkhu ekj, qdt yj'i q byjjbu ijhuiivkb."_ Their voice stayed soft and low this time, as if they were trying to reassure me - or at least make the gesture of talking to me like I'd been talking to them. They put their helmet on their head again, then stared at me for a long moment. 

There was more gunfire, this time closer than before. I glanced that way to see if any of the shots were visible from here. They were. I looked back to see if my Guardian had seen it, too, but their gaze was still on me. I could almost feel it, it was still so intense. This time, though, it seemed...Positive, in a way. I might have gotten a little flustered by the attention.

Still, I was a Ghost, and I had to guide and protect my Guardian. "I'm going to go back in your pack, now." I tried to speak as softly and calmly as they had for me. "You'll hear me through your comms. It's okay." Maybe one of the words would get through. Even one more was progress.

To my surprise, my Guardian tapped their helmet. Had they understood me or was that a coincidence? Either way, we had the same plans for the first time, and that was exhilarating. I had a Guardian!

I disappeared into their pack again. They glanced around as if to confirm that I'd gone again. 

Keeping in mind what had happened the last time, I kept my words careful and calm. "Hey...I'm here. I'm with you, Odinov."

I finally, finally found you. 

They didn't freak out this time, so this was already going better than last time. 

Then something weird happened, which I was starting to learn was just going to be a thing around my Guardian; the Vex Gate cried out before it collapsed, firing out a red laser light from its core as it fell. Most new Guardians would have, reasonably, stepped back in case of an explosion. I guess most new Guardians don't find out they come back from the dead so quickly, either, since I managed to murder my own Guardian. Whether they'd put that together or not, they did not step back. They only waited for the dust to settle somewhat, then stepped forward and knelt to cradle it in their hands. 

They gently placed their helmet against it, as though to give it a kiss, then placed it in their pack. Not my pack, thankfully. I don't need a weird Vex roommate, too. Why bring it along at all?

"Oh. So...Do you usually pick up Vex parts, or..." Wait. Did my Guardian come...Out of the Vex Gate? Where had they been? It was no wonder they spoke so many weird languages...But it wasn't like they could explain that.

"You know what, nevermind. Let's just go."

My Guardian surprised me again. "Vex?" Their voice was inquisitive and just a little excited. 

Either they knew what the Vex were or they were willing to learn, and either way was fine by me. "Yes! Vex!" 

As if summoned by the name of their species (but probably mostly by the random laser light show, exploding gate, and all of the yelling), the Vex appeared on the hillside closest to us. The gunfire in the distance had ceased. With their old prey dead... "Like those." I tried to explain. "Which might shoot us." 

Except my Guardian wouldn't understand any of that, I realized, and so I added more firmly, "Vex." 

That would probably explain it. Right? Right. 

Oh, I hope so. 


	2. Understanding You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Traveller and their Ghost get to know each other a little better, solve some problems, and also Cayde is around. (Sundance, too!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This time it's Ghost perspective first, then Traveller! Future chapters will probably just be one or the other.

**Part 1: The Ghost's Perspective**

There are dangerous places for a Guardian to first Arise, and then there's everywhere else, which are usually even worse. Resurrecting amongst the Vex isn't high on that list, but it isn't too low, either - I'd think that amongst the Hive or the Taken, on the edge of the Darkness, probably holds that award - but fighting the Vex as a new Guardian is still...Rough. They're robotic and unfearing, their guns have good range, and their weak spots are - typically - in their guts rather than their heads, which is where most Guardians instinctually shoot. And, of course, there's the shielding and healing.

My Guardian's instincts were good; once the Vex's scanners branched out to check them, they turned and ran. It wasn't the most dignified retreat, but it was definitely a solid tactical decision in terms of self-preservation. Even though I can bring them back from the dead, it isn't pleasant, and...Oh.

They might not have realized that's what I did. It's not like I could tell them. Maybe I should have had more faith in my Guardian's survival instincts but without the ability to explain to them that death didn't have to be the end for them here, I was worried. They'd already been so shaken up in our conversations, I couldn't imagine this was any less frightening. I reached out over the area's comms hoping that someone - anyone - was close enough to help. Anything I could do to make this experience less horrible for them, I wanted to try.

My own voice echoed back somewhat tentatively to me over the general communications for Venus. "Any Guardians in the area of The Shattered Coast? I repeat, any Guardians nearby? We've got a, um-a new Guardian-"

"Oh, Hunter? C'mon, tell me it's a Hunter." The voice that came back was as robotic as mine and as cheeky as it was...Definitely not supposed to be here, which distracted me from the question he posed. Cayde-6 is a part of the Vanguard, and if the Vanguard is out doing something...It's either important or dangerous. Usually both, but especially the latter when it comes to this EXO.

"Cayde? What is the Vanguard doing here?" Had I resurrected my Guardian in the middle of something?

"No, no. I'm not here." Cayde responded firmly. Somehow, there was still just a hint of humor in his voice. "Got it? You didn't see me."

"I....Haven't seen you." I pointed out. "We're talking over comms."

Cayde clicked his tongue - or at least imitated the sound. I'm not sure if EXO's even have tongues. "Exactly."

Another voice entered the conversation with another imitated noise - though Sundance was a Ghost like me, she pretended to clear her throat to catch our attention. "You're distracting him."

"What?" Cayde was vaguely defensive. "I'm not distracted! Totally focused. Did you _see_ the shot I just made?"

"Not you." Sundance informed Cayde, then added cheekily, "But I also saw the shot you just missed."

None of this was helping my Guardian, who had just jumped into the water to get away from the Vex. That'd be reasonable enough, if they could breathe underwater and it also wasn't incredibly irradiated.

"No, see, you must have been confused." Cayde was still banting with his Ghost. "I didn't miss; I aimed exactly where I meant to. I just happened to _mean_ to shoot past them. You know, as a warning shot." Because the Vex were sure known for responding to _that_.

"Guys? Guardian." I repeated firmly. "They're new, we're being chased by Vex, and I don't think they have a gun." Whatever they'd been holding before, it apparently wasn't a weapon or they probably would have used it by now.

"Okay, well, tell them to find one, or find cover and hang tight," Sundance suggested. "We'll start heading that way as soon as we're done dealing with, uh...The thing that we're dealing with."

"Which is definitely important enough to deal with first, except...We can't tell you what it is." Cayde added. "But I promise you, it's awesome. Seriously." I could practically hear the finger guns.

"And we look great," Sundance added, this time with amusement in her voice. "The greatest. Catch up soon!" That was the last thing I heard from Cayde.

Oh, Traveler. The rumors that Sundance and Cayde were alike was very true, and I...Honestly didn't know how to work with that. I let out a groan of frustration. And, checking in on my Guardian, we were still underwater, apparently. I'd always hoped that I'd get to meet my Guardian somewhere nice, like Earth, and that I'd get to explain things to them and they'd be so excited to be a Guardian and it'd set a nice precedent for our adventures together...Instead, we're in radioactive water on Venus with the Vex firing lasers into the water around us. Fantastic.

Maybe my Guardian _was_ a Hunter; I've heard this is how most missions with them go.

But that's okay, I told myself. Sure, it seemed like a lot to handle, but I just needed to break it down. One step at a time. First, we needed to get away from the Vex. A gun would help if we could find one, but we needed to get out of water for that.

"Okay," I addressed my Guardian, "We need to get out of here. Help _should_ be coming, but there's going to be a delay. I don't know how you're staying in the water for so long..." It looked like their shield was dropping, sure, but it kept refilling. Maybe the radiation was messing with my scanners. "But we can't stay here forever."

They didn't respond, because of course they didn't. They couldn't understand anything I said. Maybe if I kept talking, though, one word would get through again.

"Odinov? The Vex know you're here. They're not going to get bored and leave. We need to get to solid ground, and find you a gun, and a ship, and..." Oh, this was already so much. This was what I'd wanted, right?

"Ground?" My guardian repeated. Okay, not the most useful word to get through, but that was fine!

"Yes! Ground! That." I placed a marker in their HUD on the bottom of the water beneath us. "Like that. That's ground. But we need to get to _dry_ ground, where the water isn't, because you breathe _air_."

My Guardian pulled out that odd little tool again, then clicked a button on the side and pointed it at the waypoint I'd set.

"No, I didn't mean that you need to shoot the ground," I groaned. "If that's a gun, you should probably shoot the Vex..." Is this what a headache feels like, I wondered?

Then my Guardian fired their tool, and a chunk of ground disappeared from where it hit. Then another, and another, and another. "It's a terraformer." I realized.

"You....Have a terraformer?" Oh, Light, my Guardian is a Vex. Or half-Vex. Or...Something. Okay. Deep breath. One thing at a time. So it wasn't a gun, but it was a tool, and now I knew what it did. Great.

"A terraformer. Okay. How can we use that to get away from the Vex?" I asked, and the universe answered; water began to rush into the hole my Guardian had created, and us with it, directly into a cave. "Oh, no." I murmured, but my Guardian seemed content to drift with the random waterfall into an unmapped abyss, for some reason.

It was going to take me some time to figure out what they were thinking and why, it seemed, and I suspected that would have applied even without the language barrier. I thought about that as we sank through the draining water into the cave below. There was a language barrier, but so far I'd only managed to learn one of their words - and even then I hadn't figured out what it meant.

"Odinov." I murmured, and my Guardian paused where they stood, where the waterfall from above was hitting the floor of the cave. They didn't seem particularly bothered by it in terms of oxygen or physics. "There's so much I don't understand about you already," I noted softly.

As they realized - or remembered, maybe - that they weren't going to understand whatever I had to say to them, my Guardian went back to moving.

The cave itself was dark and quiet, especially compared to everything that had been going on above. The only sounds down here were of water rushing in from above and the echoes of my Guardian's footsteps. After they took the time to use their terraformer again and seal up the hole through which we'd entered, all that was left was the darkness.

By now, I was entirely inside my own head. How could I warn my Guardian about the Darkness and help them find hope in the Light if I couldn't even talk to them? I knew - or hoped - it wasn't a failure on my part that we couldn't communicate like other Ghosts and Guardians, but the fear bubbled up in me nonetheless.

In a more literal sense, I kept the dark away from my Guardian by appearing beside them and creating a projection of light, like a flashlight hovering over their shoulder as they wandered through the cave. They didn't seem as startled by this as they had our other interactions. Maybe they were getting used to me. But if we were really going to make progress, if I were ever going to be able to help them, I had to be trying, too. I'd been thinking about how to teach them to speak my language, sure, but what of me learning theirs? I could only keep trying.

"Odinov?" I repeated, and my Guardian paused again.

"Ghost." They responded as if I'd been quizzing them on what we'd learned.

Maybe that wasn't such a bad idea. What had we learned so far?

"Odinov, Ghost, Vex..." It still felt like I'd learned so little. There was silence for a time - enough that I worried that my Guardian might not have caught on to what I was hoping for. How do you ask to be taught in a language you share nothing of?

"_Vhyudt,_" They pointed to me as they'd once pointed to themself, and I found in that word a strange sort of comfort. "_Y jxyda oek qhu co vhyudt._"

"Is that...Your word for Ghost?" I guessed. Odinov stared at me blankly for a moment, then waved their hands in some sort of gesture that didn't clarify their statement at all. Then they froze as if they'd had a revelation in how to relay this information.

And then everything was very dark because my Guardian gathered me in their hands and pulled me close.

"Oh!" Maybe they were more fond of me than I'd thought. "This is a hug. You're hugging me." It was an obvious statement, but apparently that was the answer to our problem.

"Hug." My Guardian repeated with a thoughtful hum I could feel through their chest. "_Q_ hug _veh co_ Ghost-_vehyudt_."

For a moment, it felt like I shut down.

"Haha...Ahem." I subconsciously imitated Sundance by pretending to clear my throat, then shifted out of Odinov's grasp. It wasn't that the hug wasn't nice (in fact, it _was_ nice. Like, really nice.) but we were in a cave in the dark under a lake, and they still didn't have a gun or a ship. I told myself the need to shift focus was because I wanted to stay focused, and not because my circuits all felt...Funny.

Now that we'd parted again, I could shine my light on our surroundings again. It didn't take long to find a path - the cave must have once been an underground river, with how smooth it was - and it took even less time to explain to my Guardian that I wanted them to follow the path. The moment I pointed my light somewhere, they unfailingly and with complete trust began to trek after it. I needed to be careful not to shine my light into any pits for too long.

"You're like a cat." I teased.

"Cat?" My Guardian repeated.

"Yeah, they're all over the Tower. Mostly in windows... You know, you're better at this language thing than I am. I guess I have my own skills and all, but...I'm the one that's literally a robot, here." Was I rambling? Since when did I ramble? A wave of embarrassment threatened to overtake my speakers, but I held it at bay with the reminder that the more I talked, the more my Guardian would learn.

The path we were in had started to become more of an uphill trek into the darkness.

I forged on in conversation just like they forged on through the cave. "I'm generally better with quantitative data than I am qualitative data, if I'm honest. I mean, with different shells - my pointy parts - I can redirect some of my hardware for helping you with specific tasks, too. Math is kind of fun, especially physics. It's like learning how the universe works. And then, obviously, bringing you back from the dead, acting as a flashlight, interfacing with some computers - I'm not particularly good with hacking, mind, but I can search forums and databases like nobody's business. And there's transmatting, too, but we'll need to find you a ship for...Oh."

The path we were in opened to a larger cavern than the last, though it wasn't a cavern so much as a chasm; water poured down the edges into depths far below our path, and between the streams of water above was a brilliant starscape. The clouds of Venus had given us enough of a break to remind us of its place among the stars.

"Wow," I whispered.

"Wow." My Guardian echoed, and then fired their terraformer at the wall. This time was different, though - like a bright, focused beam of green light pulsing into the wall and dragging back what looked like little cubes into the tool itself.

"Uh, maybe-" I shrank back away from the beam, panels closed around my eye in discomfort at the sudden brightness and turning off the flashlight to try to compensate. "Maybe don't fire a laser at the really tall, unstable wall right next to us? I can't revive you if we both get crushed, you know." My voice was nearly drowned out by all the water rushing nearby, but Odinov looked at me anyway. Not being able to understand me hadn't stopped them yet, I guessed.

Just as suddenly as they'd started, my Guardian stopped mining and moved to the edge of our platform to take a seat, legs dangling off of the edge without a care and gaze upon the night sky above us as if there weren't a massive pit of inky blackness beneath us.

"You know...I can't tell if you know that I can resurrect you or you just don't care about dying." I hoped it was the former, but not being able to ask hurt. What if there was more to it than that, and they couldn't tell me? And all the things that I couldn't tell them yet...

"There's so much that I need to tell you, and I know we'll get to the point where I can, someday," I told them, "But I still worry. When the Traveler first set me out to find you, too, I always knew that you were somewhere out there, and that I could find you...But I didn't expect it to take hundreds of years. It's not like I didn't have good times, too, but so much has happened just while I was looking for you - we even lost our Light for a while, and I thought...I really, actually thought that was going to be the end, and that I'd looked for so long only to never find you. I thought I was going to die. So when I think about this, even though I can feel, deep down, that we'll be able to understand each other, I...I'm still scared that maybe we won't, and about what will happen in the meantime. I guess it's unreasonable for me to have hoped that finding you would just make everything okay, but...I just want things to be a little okay for a little while. There are so many things the Light can do, what's one more miracle?"

Odinov stared at me for a long time, again, which reminded me of the point of my little speech; they really didn't understand. Still...It felt nice just to say it and have someone listen, even if they couldn't really speak back.

And then my Guardian said, "Wow."

I was exasperated and a little tired, but I couldn't not find the humor in spilling out my feelings and getting back 'wow'. "Heh. I hope I didn't accidentally teach you that was the word for 'stars', or something." For all I knew, they were awkwardly telling me they wanted to look at the stars in silence.

"I upgraded my translator," Odinov added, and stared at me expectantly.

"....Oh." I replied. "Well." That changed things.

I wondered if I could maybe just slide into the chasm under the crushing weight of mortification that came with the first thing my Guardian understood from me being _that_.

And then even more things changed, because the land beneath us suddenly trembled with the weight of a powerful explosion and a certain Vanguard came over our comms.

"Cavalry's here!" Cayde announced. After a beat he added, "What? You weren't even here to see it? Come on! I did a flip and everything. I planned that for, like, an entire minute!"

My Guardian stiffened in place but didn't throw their helmet into the chasm. Instead, they looked at me for guidance. And this time, I realized, I could actually give it.

"Comms." I explained. "Remote communications. That's Cayde. He's...A friend."

"Friend. Vhyudt!" Odinov was delighted.

Oh.

Friend.

* * *

**Part 2: The Traveller's Perspective**

The tall, brassy creatures were the Vex, it turned out, and unlike my Ghost spoke a language that I very much understood. It wasn't like speaking, though; it was like meeting with a monolith. Was Atlas a Vex?

Speaking was the wrong thing to call it, too. It was a feeling in my brain, like a memory or a hallucination that was alive and trying to probe into my skull. And, like with Atlas, there was nowhere to hide inside my own head. They knew that I'd picked up the core that contained Atlas. They didn't want it back because they intended to do anything with it, only because they'd assessed that my having it gave them greater risk than letting me go. It was like they thought of Atlas like a toy they didn't want to share, or a weapon. But Atlas is so, so much more than that.

Atlas is the universe in which I first opened my eyes, where I first learned to explore and touch and love the stars, where what few friends I had were and where they would die. If there was still a way to fix it, a way to restore Atlas, I couldn't let them have it. Fighting wasn't an option; most of my excess ammunition had been stashed on my ship, and so I'd rather save my boltcaster for when I had no other options. The geology cannon might have been very funny to use, but I tended to hurt myself with it as much as I did any enemies.

So I took off running as fast as I could.

There was an old trick in the simulation that I'd once used that came in handy; a melee strike forward gave me a quick boost, then activating my jetpack carried that momentum forward. It was faster than anything else I'd found yet, barring, perhaps, my ship. My ship was still in Atlas, too, and I felt a great pain at that thought. In my time as a Traveller, I'd learned to think of my ship as an extension of my being. It was something I could call to me at any time, something that I lived in and died with, and now I couldn't get to it.

My resolve only grew stronger, and so my focus became somewhat narrow. I didn't realize that it was strange I couldn't hear my little light friend speaking to me anymore, but I could still feel it nearby. The way that a small light in total darkness changes the entire room, his presence was easy to overlook but impossible to deny and the feeling was only getting stronger. I didn't worry about it coming along the same way I didn't wonder if I was leaving behind my brain or my heart, and that wouldn't strike me as strange until much later.

Instead, I was thinking about this planet. My scanner wouldn't do me any good; if these Vex really were like Atlas, it would just be me asking them for information about how to hide from them. While that might be interesting to use later, it didn't help me while I was at such a disadvantage. I needed to rely on what I could find locally, with my eyes and lungs and analysis visor.

The planet was clearly irradiated, but I had enough sodium to keep my hazard protection running for some time unless there was a particularly heinous storm. Of course, the Sentinels had never been particularly bothered by the elements, and so I doubted these Vex would be. That was going to work against me.

It was approaching nightfall, too. Their faces were lights, but I couldn't see as well in the dark. Sure, I had a flashlight, but using it would only serve as a massive beacon for where I was. Not using it would make all of my footing less sure and probably resulting in me tripping into a massive hole and dying. Of course, I'd already died outside of Atlas and come back, and while I hadn't entirely figured that one out, it wasn't something I wanted to toy with. Besides, dying is unpleasant.

There were tall structures looming above us, but I had no way of knowing if those belonged to the Vex or something worse. The metal they were made of was unfamiliar, too, but I didn't have time to scan it and find out if it was useful; even when I thought I'd lost them, they reappeared again before me.

Some of the Vex, it turned out, could fly and were keeping up quite well. They looked even more like the Sentinels than the rest... Which meant they probably wouldn't handle water any better, and that was another thing this planet had. Radioactive water would eat up my hazard protection _and_ my oxygen, but it was better than the little lasers they were shooting eating up my shields and then my life.

I dove into the water and sank down to the bottom, gaze held upwards to see if the Vex would follow. They didn't, but the shots from their weaponry did. Little red darts hit nearby but seemed less reliable. I tried to focus on refilling my hazard protection from my pack and keeping my shields full, but this was a lot to deal with all at once.

"_Eaqo,_" My little light friend finally spoke again. "_Mu duut je wuj ekj ev xuhu. Xubf ixekbt ru secydw, rkj jxuhu'i weydw je ru q tubqo. Y ted'j adem xem oek'hu ijqoydw yd jxu mqjuh veh ie bedw...Rkj mu sqd'j ijqo xuhu vehuluh._"

The translator didn't catch any of it. Why had I opted for rocket boots instead of finishing the translator?!

"Odinov?" Well, at least I knew it was talking to me and not trying to make a deal with the Vex. "_Jxu Lun adem oek'hu xuhu. Jxuo'hu dej weydw je wuj rehut qdt buqlu. Mu duut je wuj je iebyt _**ground**_, qdt vydt oek q wkd, qdt q ixyf, qdt..._"

"Ground?" I latched onto the only word my translator had considered important. If this Ghost had any ideas for getting out of here, I was game to try it.

"_Oui!_ Ground! _Jxqj._" There was another word it had used before, too; 'oui'. I didn't need my translator to start to pick up on that trend, but I'd wait for a few more examples before I made an assumption about what it meant.

Something appeared in my Hud, a little symbol marking ground itself. Or was it marking a particular piece of ground?

The Ghost kept talking. "_Byau jxqj. Jxqj'i_ ground. _Rkj mu duut je wuj je tho_ ground, _mxuhu jxu mqjuh yid'j, rusqkiu oek rhuqjxu qyh_."

Ground. Ground, ground, ground, and a whole bunch of gibberish.

I wasn't sure what the rest of what it was saying was, but I was running out of sodium and getting shot at, so why not try to fix it by blasting a hole in it? I took out my multitool and set it to 'terraformer', then double-checked that I was taking up ground rather than putting it back. Trying to make a mountain was the opposite of hiding.

"_De, Y tytd'j cuqd jxqj oek duut je ixeej jxu_ ground. _Yv jxqj'i q wkd, oek ixekbt fherqrbo ixeej jxu_ Vex..." My little light sounded tired, I thought, but I didn't really have any basis for that judgment beyond the feeling coming from it, which was kind of starting to creep me out. It didn't feel like the Vex or like Atlas, but like I thought picking up on the body language with an old friend must be like. Better to focus on digging up the ground.

I pulled up chunk after chunk of the ground into my terraformer and watched the water rush to fill the gap. There was a cave beneath us. Perfect! The Ghost spoke more, but none of it translated and so I simply allowed the water to pull me down into the hole. If the water was flowing, that meant that there was air beneath to displace it. Bubbles soon began to gurgle up from the hole as the earth traded water for air and then air for me, too. I'd need to cut that off once I got in.

There was ground not that far in, and I briefly paused to orient myself in the darkness. The water wasn't falling far enough that it hurt for it to land on my back, and I didn't want to step out of it until I knew that I wasn't just dropping into a hole.

"Odinov," My Ghost spoke again, voice lower than before. It was speaking outside of my head again, as though it didn't want to scare me again. I appreciated the gesture, but it would be hard to hear even the translated words with all the water around us.

"_Jxuhu'i ie cksx Y ted'j kdtuhijqdt qrekj oek qbhuqto._"

Or none of the words would get translated. That was fine, too.

I tried not to huff in agitation; without being able to explain myself, the little light might think that I was annoyed at it, not the circumstances. This was becoming a real problem, and I don't like to leave problems around for long. I already had enough of them to deal with, with these Vex hunting me and Atlas barely hanging on to existence. Besides, I'd already been thinking of the little light as my 'friend'; I might as well find out if it was true or I just wanted it to be.

I started to internally address my systems, trying to find what I could break down to finish the upgrade to the translator. Good-bye, geology cannon. Maybe I could learn more words now.

The cave suddenly lit up, and I realized the Ghost was beside me again, outside of the water. It was a little light literally, too, I realized, and smiled to myself.

My little light friend wasn't content with the way our conversations were going, either, it turned out; it tried again. "Odinov?" It whispered.

It was getting more sure about how to say the word, but seemed so much less sure about whether or not it should. I could try to reassure it by doing the same, I realized. "Ghost." What did comfort sound like to this one? How could I communicate that I was going to fix this?

"Odinov, Ghost, Vex..." It was saying more words, ones that I knew. I tried to figure out how the subjects were related, then realized that it wasn't about what they meant, it was about me _knowing_ what they meant. I've asked hundreds of strangers to teach me words and I, too, once did not have the means to do so. I knew what this was like, and felt the kinship grow stronger. The little light was an explorer like me.

"Friend." I pointed at it in hopes the word would stick. "I think you are my friend." Or hope so, anyway.

"_Yi jxqj...Oekh meht veh_ Ghost?" I could feel through the light unease and confusion and just a little despair. It was the despair that got to me; that was another feeling I knew well, from system after system of exploration and loneliness, from feeling like the very planets were rejecting me. I had here someone who I could learn to understand, I was sure of it, and I wasn't going to leave it to suffer that way.

So I pulled it into a hug and desperately hoped that it didn't think I was trying to eat it.

"_Ex!_" The tiny light in the center of its face shrank as I touched it, but it did not pull away or disappear as it had before...Not for a moment, anyway. "_Jxyi yi q_ **hug**. _Oek'hu_ **hugging** _cu_." Finally, a relevant word came through!

"Hug." I agreed with a contented hum. "A hug for my Ghost-friend."

For a moment, we stayed that way in the dark...Long enough that I began to wonder what the best way to end the hug would be without making things weird. Then the Ghost made a few weird noises and withdrew, which solved that problem for me.

The flashlight came on again, initially directly into my helmet. It wasn't intentional, based on the fact that my friend began to sweep it across our surroundings shortly after, but I still idled in place until my eyes had recovered. I have a light built into my suit, of course, but there was something nice about this. Besides, it was a good form of silent communication. We didn't need words if my friend could just point where it needed me to go.

"_Oek'hu byau q_ **Cat**." Only one of the words translated, but that was more than usual... Except it didn't help, because I didn't seem to have an equivalent word for this. It was like when I learned the Vy'keen word for 'grah'; it didn't help if I didn't know what 'grah' was.

"Cat?" I asked, hoping that the explanation would give me something more. And then my friend talked a lot, and not a single word of it came through.

The upgrades that I'd given my translator thus far weren't going to be enough, clearly, so I began to mindlessly follow the light while I combed through my equipment again. It was lucky that I tended to collect blueprints even when I didn't have the necessary equipment; I could upgrade the translator again, with the right materials. This was also eating into my reserves of materials something terrible, though. I was going to be without means to keep my systems running if I wasn't careful... But it was worth it, right?

This was what I'd wanted; that sense of belonging was here, and yet still just out of reach. Besides, translating a language is a slightly more feasible problem to solve than stabilizing a simulated universe I used to live in, which also has incredibly hostile creators hunting me down. By comparison, communication's easy. Hopefully.

The cave suddenly opened up into a massive pit, with water rushing down from the sky above. It was fully night, now, with the stars glittering above.

None of them were stars that I knew, I remembered, but that revelation didn't feel like grief; it felt like hope. There was still more out there, more for me to see and explore and be amazed by. Every star there was a chance to find _more_.

"**Wow.**" My friend's voice was soft, like speaking too loudly might shatter the sky. In that one translated word, I found something else familiar; love for all those glittering lights. I smiled inside my helmet again.

"Wow." I agreed, and then found something just as exciting nearby; ore, buried deep in the wall.

Ore that I could use in the translator. I swapped my multitool back to the mining laser. This was going to be my first time using it in this universe, I realized, and it wasn't all that different than my first time with it in Atlas.

When I first woke up as a Traveller, I'd been on a toxic planet with a broken ship and no knowledge as to where I was or what I was going to do. If anything, I was better off this time than before.

This time, I had a friend.

A friend who was trying to talk to me again, but none of the words came through this time, either. The second translator upgrade had been doing marginally better than the last, but it wasn't enough. I finished mining, then took a seat and began to file through my equipment again, headed tilted back as I considered my options. If I broke down my rocket boots, that put me closer. Fine. Done. But it wasn't enough. What else could I break?

My friend was still talking, but I was (somewhat ironically) too focused on figuring out how to understand it to listen for words I understood.

Wait. There was something in my equipment that hadn't been there before.

Two somethings, actually.

The first was a byproduct of my mining. What the hell was iron?

The other, however, was a completed module: a translator. It felt off and out of place, like it too knew it wasn't supposed to be here. This had happened before. Atlas. The simulation was still holding on, and it could influence a universe outside of it? The implications of that were massive. I tried to check Atlas again, searching for any indication of that repetitive, horrible number; 'Sixteen.'

It should have gone down. The number of minutes it had left...Far more than that had passed by now, with how differently time seemed to be out here. It was already nighttime, after all.

'Thirty-two.' The number had gone up. I had to physically quell the urge to excitedly flap my hands; whatever Atlas had done was working, or whatever I had done or-or something! Something was working, and now I had a translator!

I gleefully plugged it in and found myself immediately plunged into a very intense conversation.

"-When the Traveler first set me out to find you, too, I always knew that you were somewhere out there and that I could find you...But I didn't expect it to take hundreds of years. It's not like I didn't have good times, too, but so much has happened just while I was looking for you - we even lost our Light for a while, and I thought...I really, actually thought that was going to be the end, and that I'd looked for so long only to never find you. I thought I was going to die. So when I think about this, even though I can feel, deep down, that we'll be able to understand each other, I...I'm still scared that maybe we won't, and about what will happen in the meantime. I guess it's unreasonable for me to have hoped that finding you would just make everything okay, but...I just want things to be a little okay for a little while. There are so many things the Light can do, what's one more miracle?"

I learned a lot more about him than I'd really expected to in the first minute of translated conversation.

How do you even reply to that? Clearly, this was something he'd been wanting to get off of his chest, but there was still so much I didn't know. I didn't know how to reassure him, for one - I definitely don't have enough of a background in extended conversations for that - I didn't know he'd been looking for me, or that there was another Traveller here, apparently, which brought up even more questions, and then there was something about the way that he said 'Light' that carried more meaning to it than I would have guessed. Was that the feeling that came with his presence, that made him feel so much like a little...Well, light? Was that what had replaced that feeling of Atlas's presence?

"Wow." I stupidly said, because the translator can only do so much to help in communications. We were speaking the same language, now, but now I had to actually speak the language.

"Heh. I hope I didn't accidentally teach you that was the word for 'stars', or something." He let out a wry little chuckle, and then I realized there was more to it than just the Light; this was an entire other person, with humor and love and fears. Having a friend was going to mean getting to know all of those things, and that would have to start with talking back, even if it felt daunting.

"I upgraded my translator," I said.

It wasn't much, but it was a start. Like making my first hyperspace jump or landing on a new and hostile planet, the first step was the scariest, but every step after that was just going to get easier. I was made to explore, and this was no different.

"...Oh." He responded, little eye light dilated. "Well."

So we were both uncomfortable, now.

Great.

Then there was another voice in my head, loud and cheery. I didn't throw my helmet, but oh, did I want to.

"Cavalry's here!" The stranger's voice exuded confidence that immediately swapped out for a more complaining tone. "What? You weren't even here to see it? Come on! I did a flip and everything. I planned that for, like, an entire minute!"

Maybe a minute was longer than I'd thought. I internally tried to reassess time in this universe, but then set it aside. I could figure that out later, but this? This was happening now. I looked to my Ghost for help.

"Comms. Remote communications." He explained.

That, at least, I understood. Of course, most of my comms in the past had been from long-dead allies while the universe was ending or, like, pirates.

"That's Cayde." The Ghost added. "He's...A friend."

"Friend." Like my Ghost. I grinned inside my helmet and intentionally swapped back to my own language. "Vhyudt!"

If this translator broke or stopped existing, we'd need to be able to work without it.

Now I just needed to talk to multiple strangers, get out of a giant hole in the ground surrounded by water without a ship, fix my little pocket dimension, and deal with the Vex. Easy!


End file.
